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Memories From My First Job
The only thing that didn’t happen was actual work.
There once was a time when I worked a less, how shall I say, rewarding job. Like many people, my first venture into the workforce was at a local grocery store. I was sixteen, a sophomore in high school, and looking for money. So, I turned to the “we hire everyone” mentality of the local store. They signed me on as a bag boy — wait, I’m sorry — front service personnel. I’m sure the fancy title was intended to raise the morale among our measly ranks in exchange for paying minimum wage. Fancy title or not, I was now part of the working world.
For three years, I worked pretty hard at not working at all. Most of the time I worked, er, spent at the store, five or so of my friends from school were also on the payroll. We had that store wired. I could walk in that store today and point out which aisles had “dummy” surveillance cameras and which had working ones. I knew the managers’ routines, how much revenue the store made daily, I knew… Now that I think about it, I knew some valuable information should 16-year-old me had less than ideal motives.
Anyway, my friends and I used our knowledge for good, not ill.
Mostly good.
I would start the day by clocking in exactly seven minutes late because the clock-in system was programmed to round to the closest seven-minute period. Seven minutes late was rounded down to being on time. In turn, I would also clock out precisely seven minutes early, thus maximizing my pay per time “worked.”
A good majority of my on-the-clock time was spent in the parking lot, “collecting carts.” This is where the magic happened — and by magic, I mean trouble. My fellow cart collectors and I often played a game where we would dare each other to do things; we called this excellent game “I Dare You.” We were so creative. The game began with benign things, like setting off our car alarms for some time or lying down in the middle of traffic lanes to see if anyone reacted. Things escalated quickly from there.
I won’t say that I once got a friend to urinate in the parking lot median while we aimed our car’s headlights at him and honked our horns. I also won’t say we collectively hung a shopping cart vertically from a tree in the middle of…
